Security
What it stops, and what it doesn't yet.
Blocknet sits in the path of an agent's network access and payments. You should know exactly what that protects you from before you rely on it.
01
Non-custodial
Blocknet never holds keys, never signs and never moves money. It decides, and the agent's own wallet signs. There's no pool of funds to steal from Blocknet, and nothing for it to lose on your behalf.
02
What it protects against
| Risk | How Blocknet handles it |
|---|---|
| Runaway spend from a loop | Daily budget, a cap per request, and budget held for approved payments |
| Paying an overpriced service | Per-request cap and a threshold above which a person decides |
| Paying an unknown or failing service | Unknown services wait for a person; services that fail lose trust |
| Payment on an unexpected chain or currency | Allowed networks and currencies |
| Reusing an approval | Approvals work once, for one service, and expire |
| An agent approving its own payment | Approvals need an admin token the agent doesn't have |
| Reaching hosts it shouldn't | Deny list checked before anything is sent: cloud metadata, internal hosts, anything you name |
| Disputes about what happened | Append-only audit log with the reason for every decision |
These hold when every outbound call goes through Blocknet. See the first limit below.
03
Known limits
Routing is up to you
An agent that calls a service directly, or signs a payment without asking, goes around Blocknet. Run agents where their only way out is through Blocknet, and keep the wallet behind code that signs only after an approval. Wallet-side enforcement is on the roadmap.
Keep the admin token from the agent
Approving a payment needs a token Blocknet makes on first run and keeps in a file only you can read. An agent that can read your home folder could read it too, so run agents without access to it.
Keep it private
The dashboard and the budget and audit views show hosts, prices and decisions. Keep Blocknet on the local machine or behind access control.
Host names, not addresses
Rules match the name in the address. A name that resolves to a blocked IP isn't caught yet.
Approvals live in memory
A restart drops pending approvals, so agents must ask again. Spend survives, because it's rebuilt from the log.
The log isn't tamper-evident
Anyone with access to the file can change it. Copy it to append-only storage if that matters to you.
04
Report a problem
Write to contact@acificlabs.com with "Blocknet security" in the subject, and steps to reproduce. We reply within three business days. Please don't report security issues in public.
Next: the roadmap